RESEARCH | ANALYSIS | DESIGN | PROTOTYPE | WIREFRAME
Sector: Travel and Tourism
Client: Start-up airline Fly UX (Student Project at UXDI)
Project duration: 4 weeks
Tasks
The Challenge:
This project had a tight deadline alongside a requirement to learn new technologies, new software and ways of thinking. It helped me understand the process behind the research, psychology and design of a commercial website with booking and payment systems.
A start-up airline is looking to create an online experience that is fast, easy, and intuitive: one that’s based on a deep understanding of their target users. The airline needed to compete with the more established airlines by improving the design and creating a faster way to book online flights.
The new design will help the business grow by increasing customer traffic and conversion rates as well as a faster boarding time with the online e-tickets.
Competitive Benchmark
According to the Aviation Institute, most customers choose based on price and time, and those customers who find both airlines equal choose based on secondary characteristics related to quality.
The aviation market is changing every day and in 2020 airlines companies across the world have been heavily hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.
My research included a user-testing comparison of four existing airline companies - British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and low-cost airlines AerLingus and Eurowings (the only carrier of the four to no longer fly transatlantic).
Before we started looking at the design of the airline website, I gathered some insight on people's travelling tendencies and ways in which people book flights, as well as which devices they use. We set up an online survey and asked them to fill it out.
I used quantitative research - a short survey designed to acquire actionable insight using just ten simple questions. Evidence suggests respondents often tire of surveys so I kept it short and specific, knowing I could complement this with rich data from my usability testing.
I surveyed 50 people and I found that most book flights online using a desk/laptop or mobile. Respondents believed the desk/laptop was more secure and they were less prone to make mistakes when choosing dates or making payments. However, when in a hurry they preferred the mobile. Mobiles were also most frequently used to check-in or as a boarding pass (downloadable e-ticket or through the mobile app).
Below you can see some images of the findings from the users' responses which informed my decision to create a dynamic desktop website which would be portable to mobile. Building a native app, as I had first considered, wasn't necessary in this case.
USER COMMENTS
"I find it more secure to book a flight from a desktop or laptop computer, because it is easier to make mistakes on the phone."
- Survey results % -
USER COMMENTS
"The are too many adverts they are too distracting, I just want to book a flight."
- Aer lingus usability testing comment -
SURVEY RESULTS
QUESTION 10 | ANSWERS 40 | AVERAGE TIME: 2 MINS
The users completed a recorded test on Aerlingus, Eurowings, Virgin and British Airways. Participants used the airline's desktop and mobile sites focusing on goals, behaviours, context and pain points.
The goal was to identify any usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and determine the participant's satisfaction with the experience. This approach helped me assess how other airlines try to solve problems, by evaluating how usable or intuitive they are and how easy it is for users to reach their goals. The tests took place over Zoom due to social distancing.
This approach helped me asses how other airlines try and solve a problem, with this test I was able to The tests took place over Zoom due to social distancing.
I used affinity diagrams as they are one of the best tools to analyse ideas and organise data to build consensus amongst the team.
Overview:
Asking respondents to collaborate in the creation of the affinity diagrams was highly informative and provided lots of actionable insight. The affinity diagram created the opportunity for people to voice their opinion as well as seeing what others thought of the process.
To understand how customers find and interact with other service providers I created a Customer Journey Map.
I decided to set a clear objective for the map, where the user will be able to complete the desired process.
The user struggled when visiting the website and found it confusing, there were a lot of distractions.
Since booking a flight is something that is should be straight forward, I thought that most user would follow the process without any pain points. I didn't realise that there are many point that could be disregarded, that could cause a product to be disappointing.
Having noted some of the users paint points I realised that the airline company could loose clients when there are hidden extras at check out.
When designing the product, the users paint points help me improve the booking process by being clear with what the client is purchasing, all having the full price on view, with an explanation of the services provided and chosen at the early stages of the booking to avoid surprises which could turn the customer away.
"I realised that most users struggled at the last steps of the process; this meant that most people would end up not booking a flight, which will then result in the company loosing clients"
I mapped out the users’ steps to see how I could simplify their journey to help them reach their most important goals with the product.
With the flow diagram I was able to visualise the process in which the user goes through in order to accomplish a goal, in this case booking a flight.
I started by compiling a series of user actions into a timeline. Next, I noted the user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative.
I usually start the design process with low fidelity wireframes. This way I iterate through many design options quickly and at no cost.
The main purpose of the sketches was to brainstorm as many ideas as possible. This allowed me to explore my design while allowing me to try out multitude of ideas and test them before settling on one design.
How did your knowledge about your users and their goals influenced your sketches?During the qualitative research stage, I was able to see the users paint points, capturing what not to do when designing the sketches and make it as intuitive as possible for the user.
Before coming up with the final design, I made four different skecthed versions that you can see on image (Sketching_01).
The version I ended using was the more simple approach with less images, staright to the point, the user want to book a flight, therefore avoiding distracting images was the main focus when building a prototype.
Explain the layout and the arrangement of the elements!
Why did you put the elements to a certain place?
The sketches made it simple when it came to building the prototype, all there was to do was to copy the layout of the text fields, buttons, and tabs. In order to convey what the airline represented, I decided to integrated the colours from their logo which represent particular feelings and emotions to people.
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Once I tested out all usability mistakes, I started designing the final screens in Sketch and Figma.
I first started designing with Sketch, but then realised that Figma was more suitable for me since I had discovered a faster was to use it with the Shuhttle Xpress control.
When designing the innterface, taking into consideration the colour scheme and competition research, choosing a corporate light design was most suitable for the airline company.
Althought, the sketch colour scheme was rather similar to the final design, I felt I had put to much of personal input focusing on colours that were similar lastminute.com, I realised that this was a mistake, people have diferent most users are not me and decided to refocus my design to the user.
I design the wesite for desktop since most people according to my research, prefer to book a flight on their destop computers or laptops.
Which details really fill you with pride? How does your final design reflect your learnings about your users? How does this design help achieve business or user goals?
I also realised that airline customers want to book a flight or research flight prices fast, designing and intuitive and simple design was key to the success in client conversions, this way the airline will
I felt I had put to much of personal input focusing on colours that were similar lastminute.com, I realised that this was a mistake, people have diferent most users are not me and decided to refocus my design to the user.
Before launching the product, I did a testing round in order to reveal possible usability problems.
The aim of the tests were to find any software error, pain points and find out how intuitive the design was. I tested the booking process all the way to payment.
I decided to test a high fidelity prototype in order to give the user a real feel of the final product. The test subjects were people who frequently fly for business and pleasure, the testing was done in person and remotly, due to covid 19 most of the usability testing was done via zoom.
Following a convetional flow and minimising questions and inputs was key for the user to be sure that the process won't take a long time.
How these user insights impacted the design or the next version?
At the beginning of my design process, I created wireframes for testing purposes.
Process:
Iterations
Screens
Usability Tests
completed
Biggest fears, problems, struggles:
My main worry for this project was having to learn new software, new skills as well as managing a deadline.
A major issue was managing time to do the usabilty testing, all but two usability tests had to been done via zoom, some users would miss online meetings, most of them were working from home and had to home school their children, which made it hard for them to find time.
As I was working on the airline design, I was approached to work on two other projects, managing the new projects and my full time job were difficult. I came up with a plan that helped me with my time management in order to complete all projects to the agreed deadline.
Overcoming the issues:
In order to overcome these issues, having some rewards for the users was key for them to commit to doing the usability testing.
When building the portofolio I realised that it is best practise to document every step of the process, that way it is much easier to go back and research and apply your findings to your designs.
SInce this project didn't need to be handed over to developers, I wasn't able to see the final live product, however if I had to submit to developers, since this project was agile it would have involved me going back and redesign the prototype according to what the stakeholders want and what the user needs in relation to the research data and finding.
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